Monday, December 23, 2013

The pain of brushwork that has been haunting me since I started drawing... It all can be solved with painting opaquely!! (and then smudging) Even though Trevor's been telling me to do it for about a year now, it only now dawned on me that the second biggest obstacle between you and a quick render is COLOUR PICKING! (The first one is putting the right mark in the right spot)

And it takes a while to get that colour right, so most people try to blend it on the canvas, which actually takes wayyyy longer.

For most materials you only need to pick 3 or 4 different colours, the rest is blending. So invest that time to pick the right ones upfront!!!

Trying Borislav's brush technique to improve form rendering and facial structure. Learned a lot. Still more to go.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Start with rough grayscale, low contrast. Clipping mask --> add your hues to the shadows. Work mostly in the low saturated tones and limit it to 3-4 main hues for the shadows. Then find your saturated spots and put em in. Then find your highest values and put them in. Continue until done.

Always unify and desaturate all your colours because thats how photoshop works best. You can paint saturation and brighten up the value later.

Shapes are usually highlighted by occlusion shadow around them.

Keep your colours as simple and unified as possible, because anything you pick will blend differently with the thing underneath it. Also, if you keep your hues subtle, you won't need as much to describe variation. Bright colours require more brushstrokes.
Also, you can reuse the hues on your canvas for different materials..... Interesting.

Split it up by planes. Any form you put down, find the terminator and rough it in (with gradients if you can).

Only put down form strokes when you need to. When you can leave it as is, leave it as is. If you don't "feel" the form, then add more.

Imagine that you're actually looking at it. In real life. Think about where the rays are going, what they're bouncing off of.

Friday, June 14, 2013

You need to make some important calculations to show form. First, find the planes of the brightest brights. Next, find the planes of the terminator. Next, find the halfway point between the plane of the brightest bright and the plane that faces the camera. Once those planes are there, just measure the speed at which transitions happen between them.

Render form shape by shape. Get the big mass in first, then medium, then small. Start with a flat value (preferably the darkest), then add the brightest bright, then highlight if needed. Oh yeah, don't forget the cast shadow, too! Add ambient occlusion and reflected light, and there you have it!

Thursday, June 6, 2013

There are two kinds of gradients, one that moves toward you and one that moves away from you. You need a separate brush for both.

Be careful when it comes to subtle value differences. As soon as you enter that territory, your mistakes will cost a lot of time to fix. Make sure your big shapes and values are placed correctly before that happens!!

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Don't edit form, just get better at simplifying. Average your transition values, then add your high-value points. It's a lot easier than editing low-value points over and over. That's how the masters did it. Building up.

There are two ways to render - airbrushy, and hard edges. Know when to use both. Make conscious decisions where you want to smudge and where you want to keep your planes sharp, because edge sharpness affects values as well. Choose your big gradients the same way you choose your big edges.

Break your image into less than 10 swatches. Then mix in and out of them. Oil painters have to mix everything by hand, so they simplify the palette as much as possible. Trouble is, in digital colours don't mix so smoothly....hmmm..

Photoshop is a big distraction, because it has so many tools and options. Paint as efficiently as possible. Don't get lost in editing. Do it all in one stroke.

Keep your painting mostly dark, then add one area (no more than a sixth of the painting) where all the bright values are. eg. Brom.

Monday, April 29, 2013

It's over. I've had enough procrastination and complacency. It's time to get better. Talking with and listening to the dudes at the Gnomon Live Workshop this weekend finally put my head in the right place. After so many months.

Came to work last night and did these. Working on form and facial struture: